The Story of M
by Little Obsessions
Summary: She knew the doctor a long time ago... Rating for some adult content and some (not so subtle hints) of cannibalism. Neither Hannibal nor The Addams Family belong to me and I acknowledge all of the owners' rights.
1. Part 1: Prologue

_I couldn't resist this. I currently am loving the new Hannibal series and none of these characters belong to me. The only thing that does is the nigh on unbelievable plot. Some characters are slightly OOC, but I tried as hard as I could. I am also addicted to Downton Abbey and recently re-watched The Other Boelyn Girl so there is a definite aristo undertone. None of these characters belong to me. I love reviews._

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The silver of the tea set glittered in the morning light. She settled down on the balcony, the freshly ironed newspaper set beside the rye bread she ate of a morning. Unlike the other women in the circle she frequented she much preferred to read the newspapers rather than the magazines her friends were fond of. She took up the paper, fresh and firm, in her hands. She scanned the front page and her interest was immediately piqued by the title; _Serial Killer Dubbed Minnesota Shrike. _She turned to page 2 and began reading, the massive broadsheet blocking out the weak sun.

She placed the newspaper down and steepled her fingers, taking her luke-warm cup between her hands. It often struck her as strange when something from her past came to her. In this case a familiar name that stirred unusual feelings in her. She stared out into the lands on which their family estate was built. She ran her fingers over the headline again and took a sip of her tea. Hannibal. Hannibal Lecter.

"Morticia? You are awake early."

"Yes," she turned in her chair to look at her husband, "Good morning darling."

"Good morning, cara mia," he took his place beside her and fearing the awkward interaction that this shadow from the past would create, she chose not to ruin his morning. No matter how distant, now unreal it seemed now; it would always be a reality for him.

He took up the newspaper, and even with his interest in the macabre he chose to bypass the story and turned directly to the business section of the Sunday paper. She smiled lightly. Gomez had a delicate stomach for things that seemed lacking in any repentance at all. And she had learned that all those years ago.

"We are still dining with Mr Selzinski tonight?" Gomez said this more as a reminder, than a question, from behind the newspaper.

She smiled lightly at the unusual expectation placed upon her. It was unusual that she was asked to play the entertaining wife, though when it was required of her she did it with little complaint.

"Where are we going Gomez?" She drew her eyes away from that headline again to look at his eyes that had appeared over the top of the paper.

"The Bistro," he smiled, "I had my secretary book it. And if they are terrible company then you and I can dance."

She laughed lowly, as was her limit, and reached out to take his hand in hers.

"Are you alright?" He folded the paper in to his lap and squeezed her hand.

"Of course," she smiled lightly, "As you said, it is early."

The conversation flowed in fits and starts throughout the dinner and Gomez resorted to the tongue loosening Bollinger to attempt to close up the deal, and the evening. Both the Addamses, with the inherent breeding that befell them both, measured their intake; their guests did not.

"But of course," Selzinski slurred lightly, "This country is such a place of danger. What about your latest serial killer? The man with the deers?"

Gomez looked perplexed and Morticia smiled, "I read about it this morning."

"The oddest thing," Mr Selzinski's wife interjected, her wine glass hangin loosely from her drunk fingers, "The pyshcoligist is a man I know of, a Dr Hannibal Lecter."

"He helped my wife when-"

"Arnold!" The wife interrupted hastily.

They would have found this exchange a little entertaining, and would have found it smugly reassuring, if it hadn't been for the unexpected spectre of a life before them. Gomez's brow furrowed and her stomach, though she had nothing to hide, churned lightly. He looked at her and she read both everything and nothing in his eyes. She knew he had not missed the name and yet in a beat he recovered.

"What an unusual name," he answered and motioning the waiter over, ordered a scotch.


	2. The Other Nightshade Girl

_Thank you for the reviews. I appreciated them. This story jumps and is not linear, though the narrative is the same._

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He woke with a start in the unfamiliar room and for a moment, had to think about where he was.

"Get up," the voice of his dear friend, business associate and general conscience, insisted again as he tore the rich drapes apart.

"Ladies," Williamson pulled back the covers, "Make yourself scarce."

Gomez looked at the girls on either side of him with a charming smile.

"See you later girls," he sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"How did you know I was here?"

"You always end up in the Plaza," he watched as the girls dressed quickly. They stood a few moments in silence before they closed the door behind them and left the two men alone. Gomez studied the room, noted the smashed vase and wilting flowers strewn all over the parquet flooring. He'd better pay for that on his way out.

"Get dressed Gomez," Williamson threw him his pants and holding up his crushed shirt, sighed, "Well this will do you no good."

He started removing his jacket and unbuttoning his own.

"Just like school days," Gomez laughed, searching vainly for his briefs, "What's with all the urgency anyway? I can't work out why you had to come and find me. Couldn't you see I was...occupado?"

"An hour ago you were supposed to be visiting your new fiancée for lunch; to complete the deal," his friend answered seriously, "Your mother phoned, distressed, and asked me to find you."

"If you didn't sound so pitiful," Gomez muttered angrily, "I'd be infuriated by the fact that you chose to find me."

"Is it really so bad?" Williamson threw his own rather nice powder blue tie to him, and when Gomez looked questioningly at the brand new sandy coloured fedora on his head, he gave in and threw that to him too.

"You look good," Williamson complemented ironically.

"I do," Gomez made for the door and laughed with an empty grumble, "You look like you've been out all night."

Williamson dropped him off on the weeded gravel of the mansion with a swift goodbye. He looked up at the home in which he had grown up and felt nothing but loathing. The house had once been his palace, his adventure playground. That was before he had forced his brother to flee. Now he viewed it simply as a prison and his soon to be marriage the only way of atoning for his sin.

Lurch opened the door for him with a warming growl and kindness in his watery eyes. He was grateful for this trusty servant, loyal and timeless.

"Don't worry old man," he smiled, "I do it to annoy them."

"As long as you know what you're doing," he said, as quietly as he could (though for Lurch that was hardly quiet at all).

"Is my mamma really frantic?"

Lurch groaned his affirmation as he held the door open to the parlour. Gomez stilled himself and steadying the buffs, forced himself to look farm more calm than he was.

Rather than a companionable afternoon, the atmosphere was tense and uncomfortable. He had only met Ophelia on a handful of occasions and he found her dull and uninteresting, not to mention mildly attractive. Perhaps for any societal man that would have been fine but he knew that mildly attractive would not keep him for long. He thought to the night before and of what had 'kept him' entertained. Ophelia would never be capable of that. And he didn't want her to be either. He wanted her to melt into the ether, like a bad mistake. He wanted, so entirely, to recapture a apast in which he had freedom to exercise his own choices.

His mother's glare, though somewhat tapered by the sedatives his father had evidently ministered, was still palpable. He thought quickly on his feet and selfishly, proudly offered his hand to Ophelia.

"It's a grey day," he smiled lightly, "Fancy a stroll?"

She looked delighted and he felt guilty. He took her soft, feminine hand in his and revulsion filled him. He led her through the halls and into the dismally grey grave yard. It may have been clichéd and if ever he were to write his memoirs he would avoid this literary trope with all his might; but on this occasion the weather truly did reflect the mood of the protagonist in this charade.

"…it was very funny."

He took that to indicate that it was the end of her story and that he should react in some way. He tipped the brim of his recently-acquired hat and attempted to feign interest.

"How entertaining," he sat down on the bench and she joined him. He did not know how to act around her, so instead he was disinterested at best and downright rude at the other extreme. He remained aloof and dislikeable in the hope she would beg her parents that they call the marriage off. He decided on a far more offensive and cruel path to test her resolove.

"And what of your sister?"  
He watched closely as she blushed and folded her hands nervously in her lap, her fingers twisting awkwardly.

"She's returning home in the coming week."  
"Oh?"

His curiosity was genuinely piqued, mainly because he had never met the elusive younger sister and secondly because he genuinely wanted to know what stir she had so greatly caused to be banished to Paris, only to be so scandalous in that city that she had been made to return. It was not a subject Ophelia liked to elaborate on, so naturally he liked to push her to discuss it at any given opportunity.

"Please Mr Addams," she whispered lowly, "I think I've made it clear that it's not something I like to discuss."  
He was willing to stoop low enough, if only to make her uncomfortable. He slipped a gentle, well-acted finger under her chin and raised her face towards his.

"My darling Ophelia," he smiled, "I am sorry. But I am allowing you to marry in to my family and it is essential that I know what I am entering in to…after all, I have a remarkable reputation to upkeep and one that must not be sullied."

unlike her, he did not miss the irony in these words.

She smiled, easily convinced, "Well I suppose, if you are to be my husband, I must keep nothing from you."

"Exactly," for the first time a genuine smile crossed his face.

"Ma mere and papa made her go to finishing school," Ophelia whispered conspiratorially, "She refused to get married and asked for the chance to study. She was very rude to any prospective suitors and eventually the conceded to send her to finishing school."  
"That's hardly an education," he said genuinely and felt a pang of compassion for the sister he did not know. After all, she had to contend with the moronic Nightshade family and no prospect of escape. It seemed that unlike Ophelia, whom the trait of ambition had bypassed, the sister was one to see herself escaping.

"It's more than she deserved. She started taking a class, at the Sorbonne, that was linked to the finishing school. She ended up…"  
Ophelia stalled and he smiled encouragingly.

"She was frivolous with one of her professors and she was caught," Ophelia spat the words out.

He was both disappointed and entertained. At least her little sister had some spirit, the most she had let him do was touch her thigh. The disappointment was that, ultimately, it was not an embarrassing enough reason not to marry him. She looked at him, concern crossing her face.

"You're not going to-"

He waved an airy hand, "It's utterly embarrassing," he took a moment to enjoy the look of shame that crossed the poor girl's face, "But no one need know."

That night he dreamed of dark angels, wandering the banks of the Seine.


	3. Lucifer

Thank you for the reviews on the previous chapter! i really appreciate them. This is an **M** rated chapter so please don't if you do not wish to read it. Nothing, aside from the story line, belongs to me.

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Morticia slipped into one of the seats at the back of the class, delighted to at least escape the austere and stilted surroundings of the finishing school for a place where she felt she could truly learn something. The young man beside her, smelling of virulence and willingness, flashed her a dazzling smile. She returned a coy one.

She studied the lecturer closely. He was older than her and his accent was nomadic; Lithuanian and Parisian, with something of Bavaria in between. And he was oddly handsome. This much she would concede. She knew, on occasion, that he was looking at her but she let a curtain of hair fall over her face as she wrote in her notebook.

In the afternoon, when twilight descended over Paris, she used her considerable knowledge and cunning to escape the finishing school again. She had recently received her pittance of a monthly stipend from her parents, and planned to journey to her favourite book store in Montmatre to see what she could find.

There was nothing worth reading in the small library of the school, and there was nothing worth learning either within the nunnery of the finishing school. She knew how to hold a knife and fork, and she mixed a Kirsch Royale evenly. She had excellent posture and she could dance a waltz well. She had learned how to tango secretly. There was nothing they could teach her that she didn't know. She was born with good breeding and with infinite ability to mould herself to any social situation. It bothered the twin-set and pearl wearing ladies who claimed to have the monopoly on societal behaviour that she did not need their assistance. She was not rude or ungrateful, merely apathetic, and that seemed to annoy them even more.

She was leaving the bookshop, her purchases paper wrapped and clutched under her arm, when a voice stopped her in her tracks.

"I know you," the man who stood before her was not instantly recognisable. Then she realised it was the lecturer from earlier that day. He was dressed casually, and held under his arm a book package almost identical to her own.

"You're Miss Nightshade?"

"I am," she didn't recall any interaction in which she had shared her name with him but she did assume that he made it his business to know everyone who signed up for his classes.

"Mr Lecter," she offered him her hand, as she was accustomed to doing. He kissed it lightly and she appreciated that he understood the offering of her hand; not like some of the young men she knew.

"Actually," he answered and again, she was intrigued by his accent, "It's doctor Lecter."

"Forgive me," she answered, her tone suggesting she was not at all embarrassed.

"I am quite the culinarian and you are evidently breaking your curfew and will not be in time to eat," he offered his arm, "When I was here in Paris, being schooled as a boy, I used to do the same. Just around this corner there is the finest little bistro."

Her good breeding told her not to be rude. Her heart told her than imminent escape, from a situation that she knew would ultimately spiral out of control, was her only option. It was not until her maturity that she understood that signal though.

He did indeed make a fine recommendation, and the small amount of food which she did eat was both tasty and satisfying.

"Have some wine," he urged her lightly, as the main course came around, "You must have wine with veal."  
"Are you suggesting I drink?" She looked at the bottle, "I don't like to."

"You must," he answered smoothly, with only a hint of command in his voice, as he began to pour the wine.

He looked at her and then after a pause, smiled, "You do not like being told what to do, do you Morticia?"

"Only by people," she whispered lowly, half smiling, "That like telling me what to do, Hannibal. Where are your manners? You did not ask if you could call me by my first name."

He faltered for a moment, "I do apologise."

"But Hannibal," she sat back in her chair, "I do not mind."

"Ok," he watched as the waiter placed the main course on their table, "Eat."

She did as she was asked, if only for the novelty of being told what to do. She liked something of a challenge. They ate in companionable silence. Unlike no other that she had shared with anyone else.

* * *

She attended his lectures on the days on which she was supposed to, always occupying the seat at the back. He acknowledged her always, even if he only nodded. Then they would walk down by the Siene. This day however, as she waited for him to pack his briefcase, he strolled towards her. She admired his dress sense more than anything about him, aside from his brain. But there was something oddly disconcerting about him; as if at any moment he might turn on her. And if she truly forced her mind to acknowledge the dangerous ideal, she would admit that it was that which most attracted her. Underneath a thin veneer of manners there hummed something far darker, seeping slowly to the surface.

"I pleasured myself last night and I thought about you," he said simply.

She did not know how to respond but her inability to be shocked by the sentiment prevented her from being genuinely horrified. She smiled lightly.

"It wouldn't be the first time that a man has done that."

"No," he agreed lightly, "You are quite a prize."

"That's all you see me as?"

"Yes," he answered, "You should prize my honesty. Isn't that what all relationships are? A prize of sorts? I find you attractive and I wish to have you. You know that I can teach you a lot. An education, if you wish, an awakening."

The prospect was, in that moment, an attractive one. In fact it had been building in her for the weeks she had known him. Like any young woman, infatuated by something she did not understand, she lay in bed at night and thought of him in romantic ways. Romantic fantasises tinged with horror; with bloody mouths and fleeting agonies.

Independently she stood on her feet and sat before him on the writing bench, giving her answer silently. He would be her first lover. He pulled her to him, his hands wandering across her body, across the soft wool of her black dress. No ascent was needed from her; if she hadn't wanted it, she would have fought back.

Hannibal, though cold and reserved, was tender as he laid her down on the sheets of his immaculate apartment, sumptuously decorated. He made love to her, and for all wants and purposes, that would be how she would describe it, even to her beloved husband in the future. The doctor made love to her. He allowed her to be who she was in the confines of intimate behaviour. He introduced her to passions she never knew she had; bull whips and manacles. But as a teacher and as someone who ultimately lacked control, she feared him. She had been brutally agonised. Sometimes, even for her, it was too much.

One of the mornings she awoke in his apartment earlier than him, and watched him in bed for a moment before she took the sheets and wrapping them around her body, went out onto the balcony. The weak sun kissed her skin in fear, knowing that it was not welcome in her life.

"Morticia?"

"Mmm," she allowed him to wrap his arms around her. His strange exoticism, his unknown darkness, rolled over her in a wave of unrelenting bliss. She felt regret in them both and knew, in that instant, that the darkness he had never explained had won.

There was not love in this relationship, only an appetite that was waning slowly. His appetite, she knew, was for something she could not give him. She had discussed the nature of lust with him once, when they had rutted quickly in a store cupboard in the school and stood wrapped in each other. He had told her that lust, though it was strong, could not sustain even the most lustful of men. He had been giving her a warning and she had taken it with the kindness, and coldness, with which it was meant. It meant he could not love her and until that moment, she had not realised that it was love that she was seeking from him. She had cried that night in bed, wrapped up in the illusion in which she had allowed herself to be covered. Morticia rarely cried. It made it all the worse that she cried over something she had always known would be illusive.

"I am not everything you think I am," he confessed lightly, his accent fully understandable now,"I dream of things that you could never want…things that would turn your stomach. I have never acted on them but one day, I will…I will need to. I have studied my own psyche enough to know that the fantasies, the dreams, can sustain me for only as long as I let them. And my control is...waning."

He said what she knew simply, without pretension. He said to her what the bite marks had told her long ago. That his burning, resentful, dead eyes had whispered to her in the shallow light of his room.

She turned in his arms, knowing that this was drawing to a close. She was oddly relieved as she placed her hand on his chest.

"I'm darker than you think," she answered but it sounded weak as it tumbled from her lips. Her darkness was patronised by what he truly was.

"You're inherently good though," he answered slowly, "And take my warning while you can. It can only end in the way I want."

Even Lucifer had good qualities," she whispered.

"But at the end of the day," he answered, "He was still the devil."

He led her back to the bedroom. The sheets lay, richly heaped, on the centre of the bed. Her body felt cold against the expensive, obscene satin. He kissed his way across her body, a pained, distorted look upon his face. She had noted this contradiction; a loathing for his human desires and weakness, a want for her that revolted him. He was remarkably gentle on this occasion. On others his violence was beyond measure, and on some occasions, beyond reproach. She had rested in a blaze of agony on more than one occasion after their liaisons. She lay there, on the island of the bed, feeling entirely and utterly at a loss. She grieved what she could have had with this elusive, escaping creature who laid worship to her with hate in his eyes. He rested between her legs and for the first time she pitied, rather than feared him. He slid into her and stilled for a moment, his face resting in the crook of her pale, cold neck. Lucifer was, after all, Lucifer. And all that fallen creature had ever really desired was chaos. That she could not change.

He came to her once more, and really, it was the only time she would regret. He brought her a gift, a fountain pen purported to have belonged to the Marquis de Sade. It made her laugh. Then they lay down on her bed in the dormitory and became entangled one last time.

They were caught by one of the astonished matrons of the dorm. He was disgraced and fled to a surgeons post in England. She was disgraced and ordered home. She was unfinished, in every way a woman could feel unfinished.

She stared out of the plane window, and traced the shape of the beautifully delicate feather than crowned the fine pen. At least she was going home, no matter the flurry of humiliation that followed in her wake.

From Lucifer himself, she had had a lucky escape. Yet she felt oddly bereft. She had not loved him but she had not hated him either. She didn't know how she had felt about him at all. All she had known was that he was something beyond what she could explain, something that blurred in the ether of good and evil. Something that she had been attracted to, until she had not. Something she had desired until he slid into her and she realised that he was slipping away.

She boxed that confusion for ever and in the future, when she looked back at it all it was with a sweet nostalgia, rather than with an urgency for what could have been. Her life pushed on, charmed and wonderful and full of love that she had so craved without realising.


	4. Two Devils

_**Thank you for your reviews. I don't really like the idea of Morticia being with anyone else at all but it's for the fun of the story. Thank you again. **_

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Morticia awoke in the cold, dark familiarity of her room. Unoccupied for a year, some delightful little spiders had set up home and she was, as of yet, unwilling to disturb them even though she had left Paris a month ago. She was grateful that she had not dreamed at all, and even more so that she had not dreamed of him since her return. Like a phantom, he had fled her. She lay ungainly, star-fished on the bed and considered the emptiness in her life to be her punishment.

Her welcome home had not been one of admonishment, as she had expected. It appeared that her sister's impending nuptials were the central focus of the Nightshade's current interests, and so her return was greeted with apathetic disappointment, and a warning that improper behaviour would only get her pregnant, rather than any sort of anger. She could only say she was relieved.

In regards to the up and coming wedding she was yet to meet the dashing Mr Addams. Though his reputation preceded him. She knew her sister to be a pretty little fool, though kind at heart and generous. She was not one to make any attempt at sibling affection but she did care what happened to milky little Ophelia and did not like the stories she had heard of the wealthy, if rakish, dandy that was about to take her as his wife. She knew Ophelia was his punishment for his behaviour; what a punishment that was for him.

There was only one thing about home that she had missed and it was the library. With her father at work and her mother and sister at a dress fitting, she found herself alone. The staff would stay in their quarters. So dressed in her dressing gown, she made her way to the library.

On that day she never managed to make it there, and the axis on which her world turned was pivoted irrevocably.

As she passed by the main door, the clanging, empty sound of the bell almost startled her. Their old, decrepit butler shuffled from the parlour but by that point she had already taken it upon herself to answer.

"I'll answer it, Masters."

He merely nodded.

She opened the heavy door, noting that it had become no less heavy from when she was a child. She pulled it open lightly.

Her immediate reaction was lust. Not paltry but overwhelming. He was disarmingly handsome, even more so because he knew he was handsome. Lecter flashed in her mind, and her subconscious use of his second name surprised her. Vanishing already, she thought, into that place in the shadows. The skill of the devil to creep in, unnoticed, and leave unrecognised.

The man before her smiled and she felt herself falling. And this time it was intense and shattering. And already, her mind was made up.


	5. Conscience Shrugged

**Thank you for sticking with me. There's going to be more Hannibal, I promise. Please read and review.**

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Gomez's breath, literally, hitched in his throat as this woman stood before him. He thought of his intense love for the female form, and thinks that she must represent everything he has desired in his life. His insides clenched and agony took over him. He saw his own fate flash before him. A vision of sheer glory, mussed from sleep, stood in front him. The agony that she was not his, in this moment, was overwhelming him with a ferocity that struck him dumbfounded.

"I am Gomez Addams," he took her hand in his and bowed lowly. But it was not enough; he should have thrown himself onto the ground at her feet and begged for her love. Ripped his heart out and offered it to her as a paltry token of his affection. Yet the look of disdain in her eyes compelled him to be reserved.

"I know," she said lightly, without the evident malice that came to rest in her eyes lacing her voice, "My sister is not home."

"Oh?" He tried in vain to hide his pleasure, "May I come in and wait."

"You may," she stood back, "But I cannot promise I'll be good company. Je ne suis pas si bon comme ma soeur."

His groin tightened uncontrollably and his eyes widened. This unholy vision, of ruined beauty, was as good as any angel. As any siren. In comparison the very thought of Ophelia made him ill. The weak, milky sapling that wanted to become his wife. He wondered what could possibly change his feelings towards his fiancée now. He pushed her, with intent, from his mind.

"Forgive me," she muttered innocently as she led him to the parlour, "I can't get out of the habit of speaking French."

"Maybe it's just an urge you should give in to," he managed to choke out. He was pleased that he did not sound half as strangled, or as desperate, as he felt.

"Perhaps," she laughed lightly and he could see that she was genuinely amused. He felt as if he had been nourished by her approval and he stood taller for it.

"Are you glad to be back?"

"I am," she answered genuinely, "Forgive my state of undress. I was not expecting company. I would have thought you would have known about the dress fitting."

The cad in him wanted to praise her lack of undress, for through the thin silk he was creative enough to imagine her body but already, he had been altered. He had been changed by the need to worship, and above all, worship her as a goddess. He threw the lecherous thought from his mind and scolded himself for such dishonour. He wanted her more than carnally. He wanted her for life. The horrendous shock that came with that revelation made him breathless.

"I take little to do with the wedding in general," he stood until she sat and pulling his trousers up, sat on the seat across from her, "Better leave it to the women. Aren't you supposed to be there, as a bridesmaid?"

"My my, you really don't take anything to do with the wedding," she waived an airy hand, but an undercurrent of hurt underscored her voice, "I am not a bridesmaid."

He was embarrassed for himself and for her. He looked to her to fill the silence, to make the transition from hurt admittance to polite conversation. She took his cue with the casual air of a politely educated lady.

"Don't worry. I didn't want to be and I am, in no way, offended."

She lied and it was the first, and one of the few times, he saw his beautiful wife's vulnerability, so acute, that she had to hide it from the world for fear of being shattered entirely. He wondered about her Parisian lover and if he had witnessed such vulnerability.

Gomez had a vivid imagination for particular images. He often enjoyed conjuring such images of a lonely night. Images of her and the lover filled her head and he felt nausea and jealousy rise within him. Then the thought, wrapped in rage and heating his blood entirely, fled from his mind.

She leaned forward and patted his knee in a genuinely affectionate manner, which made him flinch.

"I can try, if you wish, to make some tea," she smiled, "Though I can't promise it will be good. The staff in the house are overworked and I'd rather leave them to their own devices."

"Lead me to the kitchen," he rolled up his sleeves and she laughed, "I'll do it. I don't expect a lady to do so."

She watched intently from a seat in the kitchen as he went about the rather simple, yet entirely difficult task for both of them, of brewing a reasonable cup of tea for them to enjoy. He was different when he was industrious; his eyes grew more intent and the inanity in them, so false and affected, disappeared. She watched the muscles and sinews of his back as he strained, poured, boiled and tried again. Suddenly he laughed and brandishing a pot and two cups, presented it to her proudly.

She laughed at him as he came towards her.

"We are so very unskilled," she said solemnly.

"The curse of our luck," he answered with a laugh.

"I love tea," she said suddenly, "So thank you."

Again, he was emboldened by her approval, "I am delighted then, that I acquired this outstanding steam burn," he held up his hand, "In order to fulfil your want."

They sat in a companionable silence, admiring his reasonable if somewhat bitter brewing, and then suddenly she was overwhelmed by the urge to ask him something entirely improper.

"Are you really as..." she searched for the right word, "As caddish as your reputation would have you portrayed?"

He looked at her seriously for a moment and then sadness crossed his face.

"I am many things," he answered, "People choose to see in me what they want but I would hate to give you a real answer; I don't like to make a lady blush."

she stared at him again. Would she do what her mind, her heart, her body was urging her to? Would she really make that decision. She had read it in literature; the siren sister, the whore who seduces innocent men, the woman who only has her best interests at heart. She wondered, after her situation in Paris, if she could be that person so fully without remorse.

She thought of Hannibal. He has taken what he has wanted always and he succeeds.

"You know," he looked at her from under heavy eye lids, "I am being made to marry your sister. She's my punishment."

She raised an eye brow and smiled, irony evident in her voice,"Oh and I thought it was a love match."

He swallowed and drummed fingers across the table. Unintentionally, he truly believed, she had leaned across the table exposing an ivory décolletage hidden by that thin, skin-like material. Would he do what he wanted to do? Would he throw himself before her and beg for her body like he should. His fortune would be ripped from him, his ancestral home and link to everything he was. He knew her to be worth it though; he could feel it already.

"You are very beautiful," the words tumbled from his mouth before he realised he was saying them.

She sat back in her chair, "Many men have said that and they think it flatters me too."

He faltered, "But I haven't."

She smiled lowly, "You want it to mean something to me?"

He floundered, "I don't know what I want."

"Yes you do," she lowered her head, "You just shouldn't want it."

He felt embarrassed, humiliated by her honesty, "Nor should you."

She laughed lowly, "That has always been my problem."

she flirted as inherently as breathing. He wondered if her tutor had been so enthralled because her very nature was erotic. Even the most mundane of conversations, he imagined, would be a challenge in self control. It pained him that their first encounter was so entirely charged with misery but the pain was delicious. And that was her promise; I will pain you, my love, but you will enjoy it.

"You mean your tutor?"

Her eyes shot up to meet his eyes but it was evident that she read kindness there.

"My sister told you?"

"Yes."

"I've never had another lover."

He stood up and thought how shoddy the setting was for what he wanted in this grand romance. She deserved the best of everything, only the finest of what he could provide. She watched him as he came towards her and stood before her.

He reached down and the whole situation flashed before her. She thought of being wrapped in him, surrounded by heat. She let him brush his hand against her cheek, bring it down to cup her chin. He lifted her face gently.

"I think I am in love with you," he said wholly, truly, solidly, "but as much as I want to, as much as I will dream about it, I don't want to be your lover."

She looked at him and nodded.

"You deserve more than that," he bent at the waist to come level with her face. He brought his lips to meet hers, "But you will be mine."


	6. Part 2 : A Devil at the Feast

Thank you for previous reviews. I am enjoying writing this =) and I sincerely hope you are enjoying reading it.

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**Part 2**

The dinner dragged on, interminable and dull and between them buzzed a sense of restlessness. Of specters from the past and words still to pass between them. It was unusual, she thought to herself, to find her marriage in such a position. She could count on one taloned hand the number of times such knots in the tapestry had weaved into the usually calm cloth of their union.

The leather of the car seats were cold and she pulled her cloak around her for warmth. The weather was undecided, the seasons skirting from the end life of autumn to the stricken depth of winter that she so favoured.

She watched as he watched the city trail by in a blaze of half lights and she wondered to herself just what went on behind those restless, innumerable doors. Not like behind the massive, oak doors to the ancestral home that he had grown up in. Transparency, no secrets, had always been the key. Yet now she wondered if she had miscalculated (because everything she did was calculated so all ends were imagined and weighed) in telling her beloved husband about her former lover.

The question crept into her mouth, heavy and dry on her tongue and a resentment, however small, into her head. He had lovers, more than she could count on taloned hand, before she came into his life. She thought back to that moment in the kitchen when they had discussed the inevitability of what they would become as people and as a couple. The night before that he had taken women in to his bed with the casual ease of a man betrothed but not in love. He could not, should not, resent her for her indiscretion with Hannibal.

She stole a sideways glance again, her eyes cutting through the unnatural silence, to look at his hand a mere inch from her own. She noted the tight sinews, clenched under calf-skin leather, betraying the torment he was feeling.

Such skilled hands she thought absently.

She reached for his gloved hand and he took it immediately, as if she were offering him some aid to survival.

He lifter her ivory hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.

It was different for him, she knew. Her resentment became a whisper of an emotion, pushed deep into her stomach where it was wretched; unwelcome as anger or loathing. It was different because he viewed himself as the winner and she the prize. She knew, as Hannibal had taught her vitally, that in the end that was what all relationships were. Where Gomez differed though was that he thought himself unworthy of such a prize as Morticia. That made it love. And she considered herself all the more unworthy to feel such a depth of emotion.

He thought himself a prize winner by a fluke; right time, right place.

In the depth of night, wrapped in each other and sated of conjugal desires (for the moment) they would debate his theory. He laughed at her affront often and she would argue that while yes, he should worship her; she was the one who was undeserving. He told her to hush. He was there; right time, right place.

Morticia would be lying to say it did not appeal to her vanity to have the handsome, Castilian play- boy under her spell but it ran deeper, far deeper, than any sort of magic. A spell weaved over 20 years lost all sense of magic, it became vital to her ability to live and breathe. To die at the right moment and with him by her side. It was fundamentally intense.

He was not Hannibal. She was not thawed by coldness and that she knew, reflecting on that gloriously violent relationship with her lecturer, had been her mistake. She needed Gomez's heat to stave off her coldness. Hannibal had lectured only in the act of passion, not in the feeling. And feeling was everything.

Gomez was, to allow herself a cliché, her soul mate. She spun the words through her head and laughed at the banality; there were no words, in any language she knew, to describe how she felt.

She leaned across the seat as the car crunched across the gravel of their drive. She felt his pulse at her lips, tasted earth and electricity on olive skin that burned with heat.

"Ti amo," the words danced off her tongue, naked and full of promise, "Mon cher".

A low growl, in the back of his tight throat, conceded her admission. In that moment, after she had let him bask in his anger, she had channelled that unusual emotion into action. If you are angry, she might as well have muttered in her lowest, most honeyed voice, show me how angry you are. This is your challenge; show me why you're better than him, mon amour…in every way.

Of course she already knows why he is better in so many ways than Lecter, but that takes the fun out of it for her and for him.

The lobby of the huge house, though cold and desolate, welcomed them in its timeless embrace. Lurch took his leave swiftly, glad for a relatively early evening.

It was then he grabbed her, though she had felt in his grasp from the moment he slipped the ring onto her finger (surprisingly modest for her ostentatious tastes). He pressed her to the balustrade at the bottom of the stairs while he let his coat, soft wool and ermine, fall carelessly to the floor. He was painfully hot, his ire escaping through his skin. He compelled her up a step, silently, then another. His hands were hard on her hips. Then on her breast. She moaned unwillingly, into his mouth, and a smile of satisfaction graced it as he moved his lips to her jaw bone, her neck.

He sucked, bit, hummed against her ivory skin in a way that made her knees weaken. He turned her roughly and pushes her forward again, up more steps than she could count. One had reached down to pull the lace of her skirt up and she was trapped between his strong hands and his back.

She gasped as his hand fled upwards, quicker than she could calculate, and grasped her intimately. She bent at the middle, clutched the dusty bannister with hands clawed in pleasure. She felt him press against her and for a moment, despite her better judgement, she became frightened of his unbridled desire. But her husband was not so unmeasured and though his hand, that she had only recently labelled very skilled, did not stop its ministrations he loosened his hold on her.

"Not here," he murmured, encouraging her forward with his other hand.

"Anywhere," she whispered, grumbling.

"Don't make me," he laughed slowly, a flash of the jovial and wonderful husband she had left behind at dinner returning to her.

Atop the stair, where the staircase split into two and led off to the different wings of their home, he stalled. He looked at her and she saw the flair of rage again. She smiled from under long lashes.

"I can't wait," he murmured lightly and with that all the fervour that she thought had dispersed returned with scalding vengeance. He pushed her against the wall, this time under her splayed palms she felt damp, expensive wall paper as he made light work of her skirt.

If this were not her home, she allowed her fogged brain to think, she would beg him to show some restraint. But instead she begs him, not with words but with actions, to take what is his.

She wrapped a leg around his waist and used the other to lever herself on the rich red carpet under heel. She lifted her skirt above her waist and did not grumble when her favourite panties - lace formed in intricate cobwebs- were ripped like cotton thread under his clean, desperate hand. She cried, as a wounded bird does, when he pushed into her. Don't wake the children fluttered inanely into her head, but then they were miles away, receding in a haze of pleasure.

He pushed into her. Intense heat, intense cold. All the sensations that Lecter taught her with all the emotions Gomez felt for her. She cried out in pleasure, this time a breathy scream that was just quiet enough that she heard her husband say "Mine".

He chants it like a mantra, a Pater Nostre, with every earth shattering move that he makes. Against her mouth, pressed into the jet of her hair, tattooed on her collar bone, branded on her breast, deep where there is nothing but sensation he has left his mark time and again.

Mine.

"Yours," she whispered gently as he pulled her over the precipice, delicious and unearthly, for a second time.

He let go finally, his hands climbing up the wall on either side of her, white and pressured. He rested his head on her shoulder, a final declaration of "mine" on his tongue. She ran her hand over the back of his hair.

"Better?"

"Infinitely," he answered quietly, followed by a laugh, "That would make any man-"

He stalled his sentence and looked down at her. She smiled forgivingly.

"The mere suggestion," she murmured, "of any other man makes my skin crawl."

"delightful," he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

"Take me to bed Gomez," she commanded lightly, "And let names, and shadows, from the past be. There was nothing in it, you must know."

He looked at her thoughtfully as he scooped her into his arms. He would be thinking of his cigar now and when next they would indulge in such heavenly pleasure. She smiled at him.

"Maybe not for you, Morticia," a frown creased his brow, "But no man, however cold he may be, can know you and not be affected. Could have felt you under his hands and not burned it into his memory. You underestimate your power."

She did not let him see it but the sentiment offered her no comfort. She buried her face in the crook of his neck and tried, with a fear she had not felt before, to push Hannibal into the locked box in her memory where he had stayed, a devil in waiting, for many years.


	7. Devour

Please R & R. I'd be very grateful.

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Hannibal watched Will Graham, his recently acquired toy, across the room.

"She's beautiful," Graham lifted his most recent sketch from the table and presented it to him with what, with Will, could be conceived as an insolent grin on his face, "was she real?"

A splayed out figure, black and white and 2D. Naked and distant. What part, if any, would be have eaten first? None. He decides. She would have been too delectable. It makes him feel weak. And he notes that Will's encephalitis has made him more confident, or perhaps he just trusts Hannibal more.

"Perhaps," Hannibal inclined his head, "She was real, at one point."

"She's still real then," Will returned the drawing to the table, " Only for some other man."

"Do you worry about that with Alana?"

"I don't know what I worry about with Alana," he answered honestly, "It was just a kiss."

"In the past that was as good as a marriage contract," he laughed lightly, "But then we are not in the past."

"Was she your Alana?"

The question took Hannibal by surprise, "It depends on what Alana is to you, how I answer that, doesn't it?"

"I suppose it does," Will looked awkward and lifted his jacket from the nearby chair, " I'll think about it and get back to you."

When Will left he took up the drawing in his hand, rough paper under his skin. It does not do justice to the girl, the spectre, that languishes across it. She has moved seamlessly from his memory to this paper. He sat down and traced a clean finger across the curve between her rib and hip. She was not the last woman but she was his last feeling.

Since Tobias became so close, he is loathe to admit it, he cannot stop thinking about that time spent in Paris. He does not know why and it is damaging him beyond measure. Perhaps because she was the nearest thing to himself he had ever met but then again, she was the most distant from it too. Perhaps, he shuddered to think, Tobias made him sentimental for lost feeling. For the sensation of her long legs wrapped around his waist.

The loss of feeling is like the loss of sensation; the loss of the five senses. Picture this; a bullet, travelling slowly through the brain, stopping at check points to switch off sensation. First taste, then touch, until it switches off pain. Becoming a psychopath is a progression like that journey. He did not, just as a light switch, flick it on. When he left Paris, the light dimmed for good.

He wonders now where she is: but in fact he knows. Though he likes to fabricate a life where she ensnares innocent men and drains them of blood, in fact he knows she married very soon after her return to a millionaire who moved in those groups who were regularly pictured in Tattler and Vanity Fair.

He knows she is a mother (is it two or three children?) and he can imagine her wrapping a jet-headed child in her arms, cooing soft nightmares in its ear while her husband looks on from behind his desk, hardly believing his stars. Then he takes her to bed and she remembers her tutelage at his own hands and her husband is always taken by surprise. But he is not supine, he is not a startled deer caught in the head lights, she wouldn't put up with that. He is as active in entertaining as she. She is happy. She feels.

That's why they were so near, yet poles apart.

Would he devour her? He doesn't know any more.

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Thank you for reading =)


	8. A Dance with the Devil

Thank you for reading this story. I am really enjoying writing it.

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He invited Will out, without Jack, while they where in the city on a case because he had wanted to try this bistro for a long time. He also hated Jack and would like to fry his his spleen and devour it. He thought it may go well with sliced avocado and some mango coulis.

"A little intimate," Will commented lightly, looking around the cavernous restaurant.

"Especially the dancing," Hannibal lifted his eyes from the menu, to the barren dance floor, "But you know I am here for the food".

"It all looks a bit bizarre," Will laughed, "But I'll try it."

"Do you think it's love with Alana?" Hannibal asked casually, eyes studying Will over the richly bound menu. The fire in his brain raged on, and Hannibal could see him working through the question as if he was crawling through thorny brambles.

Will paused a moment, "Love? I don't know. Do you think it's real? Love I mean?"

Hannibal paused.

"I believe it is," he measured his response, "Even the most depraved of psychopaths have loved."

He is speaking from experience but Will is not insightful enough to know this. He feels stretched, pulled, like a thin veneer of polite courtesy hides his true nature and that it is fraying, thinning.

"Ideals, victims, perceived romances, their M.O. perhaps," Will countered, "But rarely a person."

He nodded, thinking of his own insatiable love, "It does take many forms."

They studied the menu is companionable silence for a while. Then there was an uproar of 'hellos!' And 'Our old friend' as a group of people tumbled through the door. The man at the front, tall and tanned, richly suited in a three piece with brocade, smiled at the maître d and grasped him by the arm, "Our usual table old man." His moustache turned up in a bright, unreserved smile as the waiter welcomed him.

The group, moving as a body, grew in size. He recognised immediately the first violinist from the Philharmonic and wondered what wonders Tobias might have had in store for him, but alas, he lay cold in the ground. Evidently an illustrious group of people. He thought of how Franklin would have loved to befriend this gaggle. The women, convened in conversation, followed behind the men. They were all beautiful in that strange, edible way. A woman with auburn hair, glistening in the dull light, came in last and was engaged in conversation with another. He imagined thighs of ivory, meaty and gentle, as he stared at the auburn lady.

He dipped his head into the menu again but his eyes were drawn upwards as he heard her name. The tall, moustachioed man beckoned her forward and she did so compliantly, hips swaying as she removed a heavy fur coat. Morticia; not a name you heard often.

She had filled out, all the better for it. A black dress, as if hand-painted, clung to her like vapour. A flash of thigh; ivory and dreamed about like water in a desert, through a long split. He followed the streak again up her body and thirst parched his tongue. Feeling after all. He loathed that desire had dodged the bullet.

Her husband took her coat from her and handed it to the maître d. Hannibal placed the menu down and observed the group. The couple were in the middle, yet entirely apart. 10 bottles of Taittinger, in silver buckets, brought to to the table. He poured his wife a glass; they are at ease, with friends. Then, complacent, one hand on his wife's thigh, he lit his cigar. His lungs would be putrid with cigar smoke, though often it smokes the meat to a more mature flavour. Would he? Yes, if only for the delight of sating his jealousy.

Would he be complacent with such a thigh? No.

Will, following his eyes, drew his attention back.

Hannibal looked at him seriously and shared it with him before he even realised; "My Alana just walked in. Swayed. Floated."

"That's romantically eloquent," Will frowned.

Hannibal pursued the topic, "She's married now, to the man who's hand is slowly making its way up her leg. He thinks he's subtle, he's not."

"Maybe she doesn't mind."

Hannibal tapped the glass at his side, sipped his wine, then placed it down all within a beat, "Evidently not."

He cannot concentrate on the amuse bouche. Instead he steals glances. Memories assault him dreamlike, fresh and raw. He sees delicately bruised wrists and promises of a patient tutelage rotting before him as she lays supine on tiled floor. Leather and blood.

Even for him she has been a miscalculation.

He groaned, unnoticed by his companion, at the back of his throat. She remained an observer, he noted, while her husband courted the group's attention as if he were king. She hid behind lazily seductive eye lids and nodded, a few words here and there, but seemed to float above the company, champagne glass held delicately between marble fingers.

The starter was paltry, unable to satiate his appetite with mere food. He felt an iron band of distress tightening around his chest and knew the only way to disperse it, to remove this instrument of persuasion, was to plunge into the delicious pool of psychopathy.

Will noted his companion's distraction and waved his fork before Hannibal, "This is no way as good as something you would make."

He smiled genuinely at Will. He liked him, more than he cared to admit, and he was touched that Will wished to distract him from his suffering. He placed a falsely placating smile on his face and felt his own brain alight.

Their dinner was disappointing at best, though the wine was good and the view tortuously better. Throughout the entire dinner, even if she had noticed him, she did not once acknowledge him. And he felt so very insulted either way. If she had noticed him she was avoiding him and if she hadn't she dented his pride by not sensing him there.

He knew of course that he was being ridiculous. But that's the issue with emotion, it is illogical. It pulls an otherwise bright, logical machine into confusion. He has saw it in enough anxious patients, who otherwise would have been brilliant, if it hadn't been for nagging emotions.

The music started up, though the band had been warming up in fits and starts from the moment they arrived. Her husband straightened his spine and sitting back, he whispered in her ear. She inclined her head intimately towards her husband, naturally and unabashedly, allowed him to draw her in.

She shook her head lightly in response to whatever her husband had said and smiled brightly. Hannibal was shocked to see it, for it had never been something he had associated with her. A small smile was more than she had ever gifted him. Her husband sighed mockingly and she put a hand against his cheek, returning his attention to her. She smiled consolingly and kissed his mouth. He seemed sated and content and he returned to conversation with his smaller friend at his side.

"You're distracted Hannibal," Will offered lightly, "Even the very good meal could not distract you from this woman. Do I dare turn around and look?"

"At your discretion." He forced a laugh which sounded genuine. He was delighted with his force of animation; it was difficult to entertain his true nature and display the inane humanity that he was attempting to emulate. He watched Will as he swivelled lightly in his chair. A pause, then he returned.

"I see what you mean," he nodded gravely, "She is almost," Will pondered the word, "Repulsively beautiful. And married. You're not going to win that one."

"No," he motioned the waiter over and smiled at Will, "You'll have a brandy."

He did nothing impulsively. The only moment of impulse for him was before he drew hands, or a weapon, against a person. At that moment, a rush of euphoria, which he knows is merely chemical. But chemicals are powerful and those of nature even more so. When the brandy arrived he inclined his head to Will, and at the start of a waltz, stood up. He felt heady.

"Excuse me."

He knew Will was watching him as he strode across the room.

"Morticia."

A pause. A beat. He watched her racing through her sharp mind for recognition. She will hear his accent before she sees his face. He's a striking man but his accent even more so.

Her husband turned curious eyes on him, pulling his attention away with an 'Excuse me Williamson.' His friend, obviously a clever fellow, acquiesced quietly.

"Hannibal," she nodded quietly.

There were 2 people at the table who inadvertently reacted, suggesting her liaison with him was a rather discreet matter. The rest of the table were, in the way that rich people are, politely curious. Would he entertain them? Was he one of them? Had they known him at Yale? Was he so rich he was acceptably eccentric, just like them? His stomach twisted in knots of disgust and he felt the veneer thinning. These people were repulsive in their surety. He painted an implacable, politely modest smile on his face.

The first to react was the auburn haired woman; who was bristling with self-confidence and daring (or at least her neck line suggested so). She raised a brow at her dear friend, who she was hip to hip with, then smiled tightly though her eyes sparkled with enjoyment.

The second was her husband. His shoulders suddenly seemed to expand in his expensively tailored suit. His physicality became ominous; relaxed spine stiffened, jaw tightened around the carelessly hung cigar, he imagined short nails digging into her thigh in competitive half-moons. But his face was impassively courteous, while his eyes glistened black with fury. It was only discernible if you were looking for it and Hannibal was looking for it. It was not only his occupation but his pleasure.

"Hannibal," Morticia repeated again, this time slightly more confident. He admired her gracefulness as she danced into this situation with aplomb.

"How have you been?" He reached for her hand through the myriad of champagne bowls and cigar smoke and pressed his lips to it. Noted her wedding rings; a plain band. wedding. A black diamond that was sizeable. Engagement. A band of pure diamond. Eternity. He baulked at her adoption of sentimentality.

She smiled lowly and he remembered that smile.

"I am well," she motioned with her hand to her husband.

"I am Gomez," the man took his cue from his wife with undue force, "Gomez Addams."

"Mon amour," Morticia turned to her husband, soothing in her affectation, "This is Dr Hannibal Lecter, an old friend."

But Gomez Addams already knew that. And the group seemed to sense it too. A wave of hostility moved through them and they decided best to resign. He heard the first violinist complaining vehemently about the new artistic director of the orchestra.

He was tempted to agree but it would be rude to cut across a conversation and above all, he abhorred bad manners.

"Morticia, I know how you like to dance," he continued after a pause,"Would you care to waltz?"

He was confounded by what passed between the husband and wife then.

She looked to Gomez for permission and there was no doubt in Hannibal's mind that it was that she sought. There was also no doubt that had they not been in polite company, and this was one of those seedy bars he had no doubt the Addamses occupied, Mr Addams would have told him where to go with his dancing request. In Spanish if his accent was anything to go by. But just like Hannibal, Gomez Addams, and he wagered Morticia even more so, was concerned with manners.

As it stood Gomez would have looked foolishly jealous if he did not comply. Hannibal was pleased he had the upper ground. So Gomez inclined his head wordlessly and Morticia took his hand. Not, he noted though, without a squeeze of her husband's leg under the table. Hannibal's chances seemed to become leaner but then, he did always like a challenge.

Sentimentality threatened to overwhelm him as he took her in his arms and the band struck up. His hand found her hip and they began to move. His vanity noted she had gained weight, imperceptible to the eye, and for the better of the aesthetic, but nonetheless she had filled out from early womanhood to defiant middle age. Her appearance was all well and good, and for some men she would have not been to their taste, but it was her manner that captivated him even more now than it had in those Paris days. Every move was calculated to elicit the best result but she flirted because she knew no other way. Eroticism was in every gesture because it was her driver, not because she gained anything from it.

"Do you always ask your husband for permission?"

"Hannibal," she laughed lowly, "Must you be so perceptive? I had thought our reunion would be pleasantly nostalgic rather than competitively hostile."

He eyed her husband as he turned her effortlessly on the dance floor. The company around him has receded to a posse of defenders; he sat in the middle, eyes unblinking as he watched his prize in the original victor's arms. He felt himself grow warm, content at the thought.

"I didn't start the hostility," he smiled.

She tipped her head to the side and stepped backwards fractionally, so that she was further away from him.

What would her heart taste like? Or when he cut her open, like him, would there just be a deep cavity.

Her eyes took on a darker hue, "Don't badger him," she warned.

"For my sake," he laughed lightly, "Or yours?"

" I give you more credit than you deserve. Forgive my poor judgement."

He puzzled over her insult which was sharp and barbed and deliciously rude. He hid his displeasure because he was genuinely interested in where this conversation was going. He also admired her wit, her intelligence.

"How do you mean?"

"Look at us," she whispered quietly, "You've watched us all evening. Does he look like he would hurt me?" She leaned towards his ear and her mouth, plump vermillion, brushed against it, "Unless, with my permission."

He understood the shared and intimate ambiguity entirely. He was winded by it. He may have taught her the art of passion but with the man her eyes now lingered reassuringly on, she had mastered it. He pictured her, kneeling for her husband, hands bound and eyes wondrous, as she once had for him.

"Despite the fact," she continued in a kinder vain, "You think I did not notice you, I did. I want you to be a memory I enjoy not someone who incites the ire of my husband."

"He likes other men to want you," he responded, "Until they are a real threat."

She laughed in the back of her throat, "You aren't a threat Hannibal," she whispered, and in her voice there was kindness as well as coldness, "Gomez is an unfortunate custodian of the knowledge of our past relationship and is bound to feel jealous. As is my friend Carmen, though she enjoyed your resurfacing much more than my husband."

"And what about you? Have you enjoyed it?"

"Not the lexical choice I'd make," she answered honestly, "But you are still a fine dancer."

"Can Gomez Addams dance?"

"Yes," she answered, " He can."

"How are your children?"

At this she stalled and behind those dark eyes, he saw fear unravelling for a moment. Then she checked that emotion , "You keep track?"

"I feel it is my duty," he answered as the music slowed. She looked at him for a moment as they stopped moving completely and understanding, a thin thread of spider-silk, passed between them. He felt twisted under her scrutiny.

"Let me free you of that now, my darling doctor," she held both of his hands in hers, "You once told me you were Lucifer, and while still an attractive prospect, it is not something I could be swayed to. I am infinitely loved and I love greatly. You tutored me in the art of pain, in every way a young girl can be tutored. I thank you for it. And I thank you for driving me into the arms of the man that I have given every inch of my being to."

He stared at her, in awe of her loquacious and honest monologue. Her candid admission of love for her husband reviled him. He coiled into jealousy, however preposterous that emotion was to him. He felt a beast rear up in him, felt the intense desperation to shred her to ribbons and have her intimately all in the one moment. But instead, he stared at her.

"I loved you," he said quietly, "Or at least I loved you in my own way."

"Another life time," she touched her hand to his cheek, "And another path. We would never have worked. You must believe me."

She nodded and allowed him to escort her to her table.


	9. Reprieve

Thank you for reading and reviewing.

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Gomez was waiting for her and was not doing a particularly excellent job of hiding it. She had kept her eyes on him as she had danced with Hannibal. She told herself it was for his reassurance and was reluctant to acknowledge it was for her own. Something had changed in him. He felt different, he held himself differently. Liquid in her grasp.

Her intimate knowledge of someone had never been so exact and she read Gomez with the familiarity of a clairvoyant. He was overflowing with rage and it radiated through the company which they had intended to enjoy in the light-hearted way one does with their dearest friends. He had removed his jacket and slung it carelessly along the back of the chair and had refused even Williamson's attempts to soothe him. Instead he sat, poorly attempting to remain implacable.

It annoyed her that Hannibal thought he had the measure of Gomez. Lots of people had, at one point or another of business or pleasure, taken for face value the careless laughter, apparent innocence and his blind -siding naivety that seemed to be the primary traits of Gomez Addams.

They failed to notice the shrewd business mind until they had signed a contract which did little for their profits, the cunning swordsmanship until they were crosses between two foils and on their knees or the blinding passion that he had for his wife when they thought she'd be easily taken from under the fop's nose. Hannibal had, in his admirable and repulsive arrogance, forgot to realise that 20 years had passed and matured her in ways that she didn't think were possible.

She liked that about Gomez; his unfailingly genuine soul had many contradicting facets. But it was always genuine to what he felt was right.

Though something else was clouding her brain; the way he had held her, the way he had looked at her with those dead, desperate eyes. When once it had filled her with desire, now it filled her with something she rarely felt; fear. She tried desperately to push her knowledge aside but knowledge, when gained, could never be ignored again. And inherently, crawling into her ear like a whispered sin, she knew that he had transcended those human barriers of moral lines that kept humans in check. Repulsion filled her, overspilling into horror.

Gomez's unfailing sense of justice told him right now that this man was trying to steal his wife and that it was not an acceptable kind of crime to commit. As a result he stood up as they came towards the table, he smiled lightly at her and turned towards Hannibal. There was a moment of pause, fraught tension as Hannibal remained holding her hand. Then it snapped in the indelicate way that those situations do.

"You look like you dance well Dr Lecter," Gomez comment and motioned to the company around them, "Would you like to join us?"

Morticia looked sideways at Hannibal as Gomez continued, "I'm sure we would all love to be regaled by your stories of serial killers."

Hannibal inclined his head in mock graciousness, "I can see that you are already entertained."

He turned to her and bowed his head over her hand, "It has been a pleasure."

She smiled, forcing her repulsion from pulling her teeth against her lips, from making her take a step back,"It has Hannibal."


	10. Honour

_Thank you for reading and sticking with this story._

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He went to his wine cabinet after dropping Will at that isolated cabin he called a home. He selected a red, room temperature and perfectly matured. He sunk into the couch in his private parlour and began his routine; swirled the wine around the glass and took in the notes of oak, his nose perched over the rim of the glass , allowing his incredible olfactory talent to carry him away. Then the moment he savoured and like any great pleasure in life - carnal, physical, emotional – it lasted for a moment as he let the first sip roll over his lips, linger on his tongue. Morticia had been a moment of carnal pleasure. The smell of her skin had been the same when he had breathed her in, though there were notes of motherhood and the smell of another man on her. It had repulsed and angered him. Neither emotions sat well within Hannibal and he was angered by the fact that the passage of time had made a fool of him. He still desired her and now it was stronger. Nothing would be wasted. He would honour her like he had never honoured anyone before. His mind was made up.

His thoughts fled to Bedelia and for a moment his hand lingered over the phone at his side. Carnal pleasure. But no he would rather not. For one he did not want to wake her and two, no matter how beautiful, his desires could not be sated right now.

He stood up and went towards the stylish, antique Roladex on the immaculate kitchen counter. He produced a slither of paper from his pocked, and checking the details once again, he slipped it in under the letter 'A'.

he devoted the next few weeks to learning her routine. Or lack thereof. She rarely left the house and when she did she was always with him. She dined with him, she visited the opera with him and on some lunch times, paid a visit to his office. When she was not with him she took the female child on the dress maker errands, or on trips to an unremarkable purveyor of torture instruments in a back alley. One night, when curiosity won over the sensibility with which he was usually paired, he stood for a while on the edge of the graveyard that circled the house. He was impressed by the vast land and perplexed by the apparent security that the millionaire's estate seemed to lack. It was a marker of arrogance in Mr Addams, one that Hannibal planned to flout. He loathed arrogance almost as much as he loathed bad manners.

He followed them to the opera one night and watched them become entangled in the second act of La Boheme, with the intensity of a voyeur, the dedication of a psychologist and the jealousy of a former lover. She writhed in genuine delight, head and ebony hair tossed back, red lips parted in ecstasy and bitten intermittently for fear of interrupting the aria as her husband on bended knee between her legs, did exactly what Hannibal needed to do. Exquisite taste. Had he done that to her, all those years ago in Paris? Had he solicited that response? He could not remember such abandon. He had appreciated her control, her ability to give over only what she wanted him to have. Yet now, in the dim light of a glorious theatre, she was handing everything over to her husband on a plate. Unreserved, unabashed, as pleasure washed over her and a blush flushed her cheeks. He flared with rage and for the first time in many years, lost his temper swiftly. They found the body of a front of house contract worker, hanged by a staging rope, the following morning.

He knew she would read about it in her freshly ironed paper and know it was him. Subconsciously, he would have opened that facet of her memory she had closed in Paris.


	11. Transgressions

_Thanks for reading this story. This chapter is probably most OOC but I have always thought that the more inclined to transgression would be Morticia. You have to keep reading though... =D_

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It was late afternoon and she had just awoken from a fitful and restless sleep. She watched him fold the paper in to his lap, and watched his olive hands reach for the coffee in front of him. Those hands that had touched her silently the evening before, tension pressed between them like a drying thorn, love making that had left her bereft and empty. He had been as courteous, as attentive, as ever and yet for the last few weeks he had drifted in and out of this malaise as if in a dream. One moment he had forgotten that evening in the restaurant, the next he was punishing her with his own insecurity. She knew that, as the strange evening with Hannibal travelled further and further away from them, he would come back to her. She had thought, at the opera a week ago, that she had won him over. Yet she struggled to convince herself that it had not altered them in some way. To have been with Hannibal in that way had to have altered her and for Gomez to witness it had altered him too.

"The children are staying with Fester tonight," she said slowly, "He has new plastic explosive and you know how they can barely resist that."

He smiled at the thought of his children, "Just us then?"

"Yes," she tipped her head to the side, and was genuinely pleased to see that she had his rapt attention, "And I thought we could do whatever-"

There was a groan behind them and they both turned. Lurch proffered the phone to her husband. He nodded for a few moments, then made an "mmhmm" as he placed the receiver down. He turned to her, concern written across his face.

"The strangest thing," he shook his head, "The restaurant has burned down."

"Your new venture?"

She felt an unexplained, burning tightness in her stomach but she hid her unease.

"Yes," he shook his head lightly, "The project manager wants us to get down there. Fire investigators are there just now."

He caught her worried frown and placed his hand across hers, "Worry not cara mia. We won't lose any money."

And she loved him so much that she could not correct his worries and she could not allow him to lose such naivety. She told herself she was being foolish as she watched him dress and that she was panicking as she accompanied him all the way to the door to say goodbye. And yet she knew that it had come to its natural finale. She held him, much longer than she usually would have as Lurch waited by the car.

"Tish," he held her at arms length and studied her with kindness, "Is all ok?"

"Yes," she shook the feeling away, "Of course. Just hurry back please."

He reached out then, and with the tenderness she so loved, placed a kiss on her forehead.

"Ok," he smiled, "I promise."

"Thank you."

She watched winter night come over the grounds quickly from the chaise in the huge parlour. She had lain there nearly all day, in corset and silk robe, and thought of her days in Paris. The weight of her thoughts lay on top op her, weighing her down in a malaise she could not shake. Fear trickled into her bones. It grew cold, as if joining her mood. Finally the fire crackled and danced in the huge hearth and she had had to exert herself to achieve such a spectacle – with Lurch not here it was difficult to light such a fire and she needed something to distract her. She had decided to dedicate her time to trying to locate a book she was sure they had in the vast library, but could not find. Barefoot, she climbed lightly up the ladder. Then a noise, the delicate creek of the 3rd floorboard outside the door, heralded the presence of someone within her home.

Her heart pumped in fear yet she was content and attuned to the horror she felt. She turned to look below and already he had reached the foot of the ladder, in absolute silence. He was gripping one of the posts with soft, expensively formed, kid gloves. She felt all of those people that had gone before her as ghosts around her – their crime bad manners, some unspeakable, others murdered because they irritated him. She didn't know why he had chosen her. But he had. He had chosen her years ago.

He looked up at her and she felt confusion flood her. Her brain had long ago become accustomed to that hard look of desire, and a minute part of her reacted as it always would with any man. She was pleased to see that Hannibal still desired her; she was not one to set aside her vanity for fear.

"You're losing your touch Hannibal," she smiled slowly, coming down the ladder, "I have to say that the arson was not your best moment."

Morticia did not know why she said it but it felt natural to be critical and any attempt at wittiness was surely better than begging him to leave.

"You have a habit of making me less effective," he reached out and placed his hand on her cheek. She moved her face away. The touch of leather was always her weakness and she could not allow it to come from him.

"If you knew it was me, why did you wait?"

she had no answer and he knew it.

She watched as he moved away from her and slid his hand over the photo on the fire place. An intimate photo of her cradling Pubert. She wanted to cry out for him not touch it, yet she couldn't.

"You didn't believe me Hannibal," she looked at him, "You don't believe me still. You want something Hannibal and you get it, what would be the point of running when you've watched me forever? You'll do what you want. I cannot stop you."

He shook his head, a sardonic smile upon his face, "I am shocked by your lack of manners. Won't you offer me a drink?"

This change in conversation took her by surprise but she did not show it. Instead she stared at him for a moment. She knew she was out of her depth. He was much stronger than her and far quicker. She had no means of protecting herself and no means of beating him. And no means of finding him less sinister. She looked at him again and understood her 19 year old self intimately. She had no doubt why she had found him attractive...and she still did. Forgive me, my darling, she thought. Forgive this blinding, flaming, shocking emotion.

She knew she could not reach for the phone and she knew that if he wanted this to be her end, then it would be, telephone or not. She nodded her head, "Of course. Please follow me."

They moved quietly to the den, and she felt every step further into her home was a massive violation. He did not remove his expensive wool coat, nor the new and fresh leather gloves. She poured him a scotch from the decanter on the side board with hands that were subtly shaking.

"Everything in here seems expensive," he sat down, unwittingly, in Gomez's chair. Then she rethought that sentiment, of course he knew it was Gomez's chair. She knew it because she saw him derive pleasure from it.

"Is this where you are, privately," he crossed his legs, "As a family?"

"Yes," she pulled her long, expensive robe around her. She felt very in danger and exposed. And it rested like a weight, hot and firing, in her stomach.

He noted the motion and smiled lightly.

"I am making you uncomfortable," he sipped from the crystal glass, "I could talk to you most intimately, or insult you fully, and it would not move you. I've taken you to my bed and it has not moved you that you stand in front of me, half-naked. Yet as soon as I mention them..."

She remained cool, "I have always been steely."

"But not with them, and that is what interested me in the restaurant," he offered her, "Everything I said slid off you, but not when I mentioned your children. Your little daughter is very beautif-"

"Stop!" She demanded, her resolve nearly cracking, "Speak about anything but not about them."

She chided herself immediately for her lack of control. She had given him his first victory.

"I am sorry," he stood up and came towards her. He clutched the silk belt of her robe between his fingers. She stared at his hand as it began to pull it towards his body in slow motion. She did nothing to stop as it slipped free of the knot that held it at her waist.

"I remember," he muttered, as he tugged at it gently once more and it fell open, "Every single detail...and I know you do to."

"I won't ask you not to do this," she said slowly. She watched his eyes skim her body and regretted not changing into something a little less revealing; a little less fragile, "But please..."

"No," he laughed as he slipped the robe from her shoulder to reveal her ivory skin, "Of course you wont. You would not be inclined to seem weak. But what would Mr Addams think?"

His leather-clad fingers trailed across her shoulder, making her skin prickle. She watched as he pulled his fingers down, across the solid edge of the corset which rested along her chest and then up again towards her neck. She closed her eyes against the unique sensation of contradiction and felt shame wash over her. A shame that she could not possibly give a name to because if she did, it may make it real. She was so fully ashamed of how good it felt to have his hands upon her. She wished he had not mentioned her husband. His name must not come from those lips, be said in that accent and with such an intonation of disdain.

The box, so closed, poured forth its contents in a sea of urgency. He breath hitched in her throat as his hand brushed her cheek.

He leaned in close and his breath whispered against her, "You know what he would think. Don't you?"

She stepped back from him and it took all of her energy to stay upright. She felt her knees weaken and she leaned against the wing of the chair to steady herself. She was shocked by her moment of weakness.

"You see Mortica," he stepped towards her and again, he trailed his hand across her arm, "You can't quite help yourself and even your husband knows that that is your problem. You are letting your body betray you. In a woman I would ordinarily find this disgusting but, in you, I find it delicious."

That word held within its weight so many meanings. She looked into his eyes.

"Please leave," she murmured, revulsion evident in her voice.

"I can't Morticia," his voice was strained, " We both know that."

He pushed her against the wall at the fire side with a violence that left her breathless. His hands where everywhere and no where at once, and his smell repulsive and attractive at the same time. Her thoughts fled to that evening weeks before, when her husband had pushed her against the wall atop the stairs, before this man who held her now had brought the past, tangible and touchable, back into her world. He pressed his mouth to hers and she let him . He gripped her wrists and crushed the bones there. Memories poured forth and assaulted her.

"Hannibal," she bit forcefully down on his lip, the tingling taste of blood sending messages so mixed that she cowered from the feelings and visceral reactions in her body, "Stop."

"Why should I?" His hands clamped around her hips and he lifted her upwards, he growled in rage but a smile of satisfaction turned the corners of his mouth when he felt her arch against him. He was pleased he had elicited this reaction and she knew he would attempt to reward her. He reached up and touched her hair gently,and the affection was more than she could bear.

Because," her voice, weak from fear and humiliation, was nothing but a whisper, "Because you care about me."

"This is a mistake women in my life often make," he thought of Bedelia and Lady Murasaki, "They mistake consideration for need. Care for desire."

"I haven't though," she placed her hands on his shoulders to create some space between them, as he seemed to have halted his assault, "And you know it. The problem is Hannibal, that even you cannot do this to me. You cannot do this to me because it would not satisfy you. I would not cry or beg and at the end you would leave yourself empty, and leave me even more so. You want something you cannot have; the past. If you do this to me now, I will hate you. Is that what you want? "

"Even me?" He tipped his head to the side, "Morticia, you know what I am capable of."

"And it is not this," she held out her hands, "You would not do this. Have another man's wife? Even you are not capable of this. You are committing the worst of bad manners if you do this and I will not satisfy you because I will not be willing. You want me more than anything and yet, I will not be enough. Don't take that risk."

Every syllable she uttered was uncannily frosty; as if she had frozen her heart. She knew what she was saying was true; he was beyond any means of satisfaction that lasted a decent amount of time. Yet she had used all her ammunition. If he chose not to listen she was without hope. She had lost hope anyway.

He stepped back from her and back from a precipice. Was it enough to know that, for a moment, she had thought of giving in to him? Or, at least, her body had arched against his touch. Her mouth little sighs and her bites a keen reminder of what lay underneath those society-bred manners.

"Are you happy?" He stepped away again and she saw torture there, in eyes that were dead and ageless. He revolted her; he fascinated her in equal measure. She tied her robe, felt the blossoming agony of bruises forming around her wrist. The blossoming shame of betrayal, of transgression, that was building in her gut was making it difficult to concentrate. She thought only of Gomez, wished only to have Gomez beside her. Wished only to tell him that the small moment of weakness was just that.

"Remember," she fell back against the wall, wiping the blood from her mouth with perfectly delicate finesse, "It was you who did not want me."

"Not really," he answered, all of his energy gone from him, "I could feel it in you. You started to realise that you could not be enough and I knew it would come to this. You did not answer my question."

"Yes, I am, I truly am," she responded, "I don't know how to make you believe it."

"I do believe it," he answered after a beat, "I think that is what makes me even angrier. How can you love him when you had me?"

She thought of their differing version of love.

"I can't explain it," she answered, though it was a subject on which she could elaborate if she truly wanted, for a very long period of time, "I won't be forced to either."

"No, I couldn't even force you to be afraid, any more than a paltry tinge of fear," he laughed lowly, "I respect that."

She would not give him the insightful knowledge that, in fact, she had been petrified during what had just taken place.

"You see," she stayed exactly where she was, glad for the yards of space now between them, "I don't have to explain why I love. It is just there. And you were in my past."

He nodded lightly, "I have miscalculated?"

"Very much," she answered, " Hannibal, I know from your eyes you've gone further than anyone has. You can't turn back the clock; for old lovers or old hopes and you can't wish I did not love. You can't wish I had not made my life. You can't wish that you had not fallen."

suddenly the tension cracked. Her memory tidied itself up; suppressed and the mask of compunction slipped back on to his face. She saw it happening vividly before her.

"I will take my leave," he smiled, and it was one of sadness and satisfaction, disappointment and what could have been, "And I will leave you be."

"Do you promise?" She did not mean to plead so evidently, but it left her mouth before she could reel it back in and make it sound less desperate. She could not risk him coming back ever again. She may not be able to convince him next time; she may not be able to convince herself.

"I promise," he bent over her hand and pressed a kiss there, "And I do not break promises. However, I will always watch you. You're right about the past you know, but it doesn't stop me wanting to recover it. You will always have a special place in me. You should be privileged."

A privilege and a curse, she thought caustically.

She inclined her head silently, then turned away from him without another word. He backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.


End file.
